5 Tips To Craft A Killer MBA Resume

Your resume is often the first impression you’ll give the MBA admissions committee, so don’t make it an afterthought. A deathly (and common) mistake is to reduce it to a laundry list of job titles, dates, qualifications, and places. Instead, your MBA resume should deliver a concise overview of what you’ve accomplished that sets the stage for the rest of your application, and – hopefully – for your future admissions interview. Your new target audience – the MBA admissions committee at your top schools – is distinctly different from potential employers. For your application, you need to go beyond simply how you are qualified and show how you are a leader, a results-generator, and how you will make an impact on life on campus outside the classroom.

Join Fortuna’s MBA Admissions Masterclass: Crafting a Killer MBA Resume & Application Forms on Wednesday, July 27 at noon ET, a free, 50-minute strategy session and the chance to get your questions answered in a live Q&A. Registration is free but space is limited so reserve your seat today.

In my current role at Fortuna Admissions and as a former Wharton career coach, I’ve helped hundreds of future business leaders identify and shape profiles to their best advantage. So how can you best prioritize your experience and attributes, and convey the key qualities, that speak to your future potential?

First, know that admissions reviewers scan hundreds (if not thousands) of applications in a given cycle. Odds are good that someone is applying to your target school with the exact same job title as you. (Especially if you work in tech, consulting, or finance.)

This means your resume must be laser-focused on showing exactly why you’re better at your job than someone else with a similar profile or identical job. Readers will know you do more than what’s on a one-pager, so standing out is about lifting up key, impactful examples, as well as avoiding general descriptions that might apply to the person next to you at work. It’s not a lot of real estate to impress, so every detail counts.

So how will your MBA resume make a statement in a less-than-two-minute scan? Here are my top five tips for making your MBA resume stand out, with some before/after examples.

5 TOP TIPS FOR YOUR MBA RESUME

Invest in your extracurriculars section.

Your MBA resume should highlight personal achievements, extracurriculars, and volunteer work more than your standard resume. Why? Business schools are looking for active contributors to the community and this is a key place to set yourself apart. As my Fortuna colleague Heidi Hillis puts it in her article, Positioning Extracurriculars On Your MBA Application, “What you do in your free time (what little you might have of it) is as interesting and important to the admissions committee as what you do at work, because it sends a signal about the kind of student and alum you’ll be.”

But it doesn’t mean describing how you relax. Instead, consider how you can distinguish yourself and show that you work hard and achieve goals outside of the office or classroom.

BEFORE

Traveler, runner, cooking aficionado
Listening to podcasts
Self-taught coder
Vice President of Women in Business

(Yep, you and everyone else. Be specific and stand out.)

AFTER

Travel to 23 countries on three continents; ran the New York Marathon (2015)
Volunteer twice a month making meals at the local soup kitchen
As Vice President of Women in Business, secured over $25K corporate sponsorship for funding events, scholarships, and investments for the largest student organization at the university
1st place winner at 3 hackathons from 2016-2017, totaling $15,000 in prizes

Check out this 7-minute strategy session on MBA recommender strategy with Fortuna’s Judith Silverman Hodara, former Acting Director of Wharton Admissions, and Poets&Quants Editor-in-Chief John A. Byrne.

Quantify your results.

If results are difficult to quantify, use numbers to show the scope of your work, the size of your clients – anything you can to demonstrate impact and outcomes. Things such as the number of people involved, budget amounts, number of visitors to your website, monetary value to the firm of your client – these types of metrics strengthen your resume by demonstrating impact. Even descriptive values and numbers give a visual impression of analytical ability.

Warning: Protect confidentiality. Treat the resume as a public document. If you can, use percentages, approximations, or things like “multi-million dollar” to give as much information as you legally can. For example:

BEFORE

Project managing a cybersecurity project
Conducted internal training classes to adopt new CRM software
Completed interviews with senior and mid-management of major corporations, synthesized findings, and suggested improvement opportunities
Performed cost analysis for companies in the IT industry

(You performed your job, but did you do it well, and did it matter to the company?)

AFTER

Project managing a cybersecurity benchmarking project worth ~$400K/yr, covering 30 leading higher education institutions across the US
Conducted internal training classes for over 250 new hires to adopt new CRM software; oversaw $20k training budget for new CRM system estimated to save the company over 45 hrs/wk
Completed interviews with over 200 senior- and mid-management executives of Fortune 100 clients; drafted white paper based on results circulated to a client base of 1,000 companies
Performed cost analysis for five Fortune 500 companies in the IT industry, saving clients an average of $300k per year and generating $20M in follow-on business for the firm

Get specific about your contribution with project examples.

This is about being as precise as you can. Consider using a “selected projects include:” sub-header. Include any team leadership on a project basis. Remember, it’s better to have two awesome bullets than six boring ones, so it’s fine to omit parts of your day-to-day job. Don’t forget tip #2 (quantify results).

BEFORE

Developed and maintained effective pricing analysis data models
Developed several high-value data visualizations and Excel models for C-suite clients to help them make evidence-based decisions

(How did you actually get this done and how can you prove it?)

AFTER

Created and implemented a large consumer survey to help a media company with $1.2B annual revenue determine its pricing elasticity across multiple segments for a debut product, with projected revenue estimated at $35M annually
Led development team of five to design a geospatial data-driven visual dashboard for First National Bank, increasing visibility to all 600+ branch offices across the globe by at least 80%

Show, don’t tell, your skills and abilities.

A reader will be deciding if what you are citing is true or just your opinion. Replace words like “significant,” “excellent,” “improved,” and “successful” with evidence to make your achievements fact-based and objective.

BEFORE

Built strong relationships with clients due to excellent communication skills
Demonstrated strong technical skills using VBA, SQL, Python
Used Excel to improve internal processes

(Are you that person at work that thinks they have stellar skills but really doesn’t?)

AFTER

Presented to C-level client executives weekly on project status; sole consultant invited to attend internal strategy development meeting with key client lead after presenting recommendations
Managed an intern to develop a risk management data model valued at $50M using SQL and tracked key risk indicators
Built model in Excel to track staff hours per project; presented results to the department head, resulting in reallocation of personnel and cost savings of $30k/month

Keep the format simple.

As previously stated, readers will see a lot of resumes in a very short time. They want to see the information clearly, succinctly, and in the same place on the page as expected. Keep it simple – no colors, no font size over 12 or less than 10, and minimal graphics. Use only one type of emphasis (bold, italics, or underlining) at a time. Let your assets shine on their own – if you make the information too hard to find because of artistic flair, it may be skipped altogether by a busy reader.

Yes, it has to be one page. This is not negotiable. Even if it is not required by your target school, if you have less than 10 years of work experience, limit yourself to one page. When trying to save space, keep more emphasis on the most recent activities and pare back some of your earlier experiences.

And finally, you know this but you’d be surprised how often it can sink a resume: Proofread. Then proofread again. With a lot of revisions, small mistakes tend to be overlooked. Make sure content is aligned consistently. Check for consistency like periods at the ends of sentences, the format of dates (are all months abbreviated or just some?), and all the little things. Ask someone to proofread for you that hasn’t seen the resume before. Then proofread again.

As with the rest of your MBA application, the details matter. Delivering a resume that’s substantive, specific, and succinct positions you to stand out in a sea of excellence. The upshot is that the exercise of revising your resume can give you the answers to the tough interview questions when the time comes.

For a deep dive on this topic and a chance to get your questions answered in a live Q&A, join Fortuna’s free, 50-minute MBA Admissions Masterclass: Crafting a Killer MBA Resume & Application Forms on Wednesday, July 27 at noon ET. Registration is free but space is limited so reserve your seat.

Jody Keating is an expert coach at admissions coaching firm Fortuna Admissions with experience as a career coach in MBA programs at Wharton and Georgetown. She has more than 17 years of experience in resume development and reviews more than 100 resumes a year for Fortuna.